


Hunting and hoarding

by yogini



Series: Living with a dragon [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Derek Has Issues, Dragon Stiles Stilinski, Good Peter Hale, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5564371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogini/pseuds/yogini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>”Did you get them?” Stiles asked eagerly. “Oh, come on man, tell me you got them.” A very low and displeased grumble was heard, barely audible even for Derek’s werewolf ears, and then Stiles squealed loudly.  “Oh, Scotty, my man, I love you. I love you!”<br/>“Come on” Scott replied nervously. “Let’s just get out of here before we’re both gutted. Or killed. Or worse.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunting and hoarding

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Teen Wolf or any of the characters in the series, I'm just borrowing them from their respective owners to play with a little and I promise to give them back when I'm done. No copyright infringement is intended and I don't make any money from writing fanfiction.

”Did you get them?” Stiles asked eagerly. “Oh, come on man, tell me you got them.” A very low and displeased grumble was heard, barely audible even for Derek’s werewolf ears, and then Stiles squealed loudly.  “Oh, Scotty, my man, I love you. I love you!”

“Come on” Scott replied nervously. “Let’s just get out of here before we’re both gutted. Or killed. Or _worse_.” Derek snorted into his pillow but ultimately decided not to do anything. If Scott thought he’d kill them for raffling through the trash pile outside the house he wasn’t about to set the record straight. If anything, a Scott that was terrified of him and wanted to be as far away from him as possible was a good thing in Derek’s book because that _hopefully_ meant that Stiles would be as far away from him as possible as well. That kid had truly become a nuisance recently. Stiles had always seemed to look up to him but recently Derek had almost felt besieged with his company. He lazily turned over on his back, for a while contemplating getting up and giving the two idiots a good scare, but ultimately decided against it. He’d been into town today and that always left him tired and longing for the comfort of his own room, to be surrounded by the smells and sounds of his family, of his pack. He’d just ignore them.  

“Of course” Stiles breezily agreed, apparently satisfied with what he’d made Scott dig up from the boxes of discarded stuff from the attic. “Anything you say, Scotty-boy, I worship the ground you walk upon and I listen to each and every one of you-  ompf. _Hey_! What was that for?”

“Let’s _go_ ” Scott repeated, and judging by the sound of it, he all but dragged Stiles towards the car. “Before Derek notices.” That had the older werewolf grinning widely. He’d have _so_ much fun with Scott the next time he was due for training with Laura.

 ::

 Derek wouldn’t necessarily describe himself as a recluse. Or a hermit. Or sexy as hell but unfortunately with the resting face of a murderer. He was, for some reason, called all of those things by people living in Beacon Hills, former school mates, casual acquaintances from other packs and sometimes even by his own family (because sisters are inherently evil, that’s why). He would however, if he’d be asked to describe himself, go as far as to say that he was a somewhat cautious person that, because of events in is past, mostly kept to himself and that he was quite happy with that.

 

It wasn’t as if anyone could blame him for that, at least not those few people that knew the whole story about Kate and the hunters, about how she’d slowly worked her way into his life and gained his trust for the sole purpose of killing both him and his whole family. And only the Hale pack and a few trusted allied humans had the full knowledge about what really happened on the night when the Hale pack house was surrounded by a barrier of mountain ash and the werewolves were both severely burnt as their home went up in flames around them and poisoned by the wolfsbane that had been added to the gasoline sloshed over the wood. Kate’s hatred towards werewolves was not limited to their species but in fact extended to also include humans associating themselves with werewolves. She’d been the one to personally distribute the drug that ensured that once the fire was lit, Derek’s younger brother and all the other humans in the pack would be unconscious and unable to break the line of mountain ash, thus ensuring the death of the whole pack. It was only because of a series of lucky coincidences that the pack’s emissary was alerted and able to break the line of mountain ash, allowing the pack to escape the attack with only a few cases of smoke inhalation and minor burns amongst the human pack members as the result, as the werewolves started healing as soon as they got away from the wolfsbane.

 

To the people of Beacon Hills it was explained as a crazy act of a lone perpetrator and, as Kate’s involvement with Derek had successfully been kept out of the papers, his reluctance to meet new people and socialize was for the most part explained with the trauma and the fear that the attack and the fire had left, not the crippling guilt and the trust issues that was the real result of Kate’s betrayal. But it was true that he didn’t often go into town because he couldn’t stand the whisperings that he had to pretend he couldn’t hear, couldn’t stomach the false sympathy or thinly disguised curiosity that he was exposed to. He’d gotten himself through high school somehow and since then he’d mostly been with his family, getting his degree online and then helping out by managing the pack’s investments together with his father. He might be a bit isolated with only his closest family for company, but he’d rather be isolated and safe than gossiped about, at the mercy of hunters or dead. It was what he’d done since the fire and it had always worked out fine. Up until now, at least, because now someone didn’t let him anymore. Someone who was annoyingly persistent and stubborn as a mule. Stiles.  

 

Ever since Scott had gotten bit, and as an underage werewolf entrusted into the care of the Hale pack to master his new abilities, Stiles had suddenly begun to crop up everywhere Derek went, always trying to speak to him. Of course Stiles had always been around the Hale family somehow, at first because Peter had volunteered his babysitting skills when the new Sheriff had appeared in town, recently made a widower and with a toddler in tow, and later because Peter had somehow changed from being a babysitter to becoming a tutor when it became apparent that Stiles’ ADHD made it really hard for him to concentrate in school and manage his homework on time. And after Stiles got his medication sorted and could take care of most of his homework himself he’d just taken to hanging out with Peter as a sort of an adopted uncle. Then there’d been the whole situation with him being a dragon and his mother helping out with that, but Derek could swear that he was around the Hale house more often nowadays than he’d been back when he was little. In fact, Derek was willing to bet that he’d actually been around less when he was younger because Peter had preferred to go to Stiles' house to avoid the small kid stealing any of Cora's stuff, which would’ve resulted in bloodshed, and because everything at the Sheriff’s house was as Stiles-proof as a house could possibly be made. Now hardly a day would pass without the strained rumble from the engine of Stiles’ battered Jeep and he’d show up at every possible and impossible hour of the day, always with a new explanation for coming by. Hell, it felt as if he'd moved in with the Hales, and everyone else had conveniently forgotten to tell Derek about it and for the rare occasion that Derek had an errand into town, Stiles sure as hell would be just where he was supposed to go, for no apparent reason at all.

 

He’d try to make conversation, only to have Derek brush him off, but that only seemed to make him more creative. Last Wednesday when Laura had forced him to go into town and have lunch with her, she’d been delayed at work, leaving Derek to wait for her at the café for over an hour, an hour which he spent glaring at the gangly figure sitting in the corner. Without ordering anything. Behind a newspaper. For an hour. With the newspaper upside down. During the whole time.

 

And as if this wasn’t enough for Derek to deal with having a persistent, teenage dragon for a stalker, he also noticed that his possessions had mysteriously started to go missing. At first it was only small things, like the incident with the comic books that were supposed to be thrown away because his mother insisted on cleaning out the attic but he already knew that Stiles took those, and he wasn’t surprised because if it was one thing that Stiles loved more than video games it had to be comic books. But that didn’t explain why his old basketball was suddenly gone as well. Then it was the case of various pieces of clothing that had been hung out to dry and then disappeared without a trace, and a book that he could’ve sworn that he’d left on the swing on the porch and the travel mug that he used for his coffee on the rare occasions that he worked at the office instead of from home. It was baffling how his stuff just seemed to vanish into thin air.

 ::

  “Sheriff?” Peter said with barely contained mirth. ”I think that your son has made an important discovery recently.”

“Do tell” the Sheriff grunted in response. He was at the end of a double shift from hell and not in the mood to play games.

“Bad night?” Peter asked and got another grunt in response.

“Sorry, Peter, I shouldn’t take it out on you.” The Sheriff made an effort to pull himself together, sitting up instead of hunching over the desk as he’d been doing for the last hour or so. “You were saying?”

“I just overheard a fascinating conversation between Laura and Derek.”

“Oh?”

“It seems that Derek’s been unfortunate enough to catch the eye of a special someone” Peter started explaining. “A special someone that keeps following him around. _Hunting_ after him, you might even say.” Peter paused a second for a bit of dramatic flair. “And another peculiar thing that’s been happening is that his belongings keep disappearing, almost as if someone was collecting them. _Hoarding_ them, even.” The Sheriff groaned. If Stiles was interested in Derek’s things, just for the sake of being _Derek’s_ , that could only mean one thing.

“Stiles wants to include Derek in his hoard?” he asked in a voice that clearly indicated that he already knew, and dreaded, the answer.

“Yep” Peter answered, way too cheerfully and the Sheriff had a sudden urge to punch the other man, or at least the phone. It wasn’t exactly the easiest thing for a person to be a part of a hoard and a pack at the same time. Dragons tended to be really possessive and fiercely protective of the members of its hoard, much like the alpha of a pack of werewolves, and it was going to take some real diplomacy from everyone involved to keep the peace.

“I think it’s more than that” Peter continued, sounding just a bit gleeful. “I think he sees Derek as his hoard piece.” That wasn’t completely unusual, for a dragon to consider their loved one to be their hoard piece, but the Sheriff just thunked his head down on the table and prayed for strength all the same. He was going to need it.


End file.
